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Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn has been one of the more successful relaunches in recent memory, and after hearing from the designers, there is much more in store for the game.

At a recent panel titled Letter from the Producer, the designers spent an hour and a half detailing their future plans for the game, including patch details, expansion news, battle system and camera adjustments, and new music.

The big news though is the addition of Directx 11 support for Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn‘s expansion Heavensward.

As you can see, the differences are noticeable.

In addition, players will find that DirectX 11 will be less resource-intensive for GPUs that support it. In some cases this will also result in an improved frame rate.

Furthermore, with the DirectX 11 version, characters will be rendered with uncompressed textures, making them look even more impressive. The visual quality of objects in the background has also improved, and even the texture of characters’ skin will look more realistic.

Better visuals and improved frame rates will certainly be good news to players who have invested in Directx 11 graphics cards and have been waiting to take advantage of them.

The DirectX 11 client will be released at the same time as Heavensward. After the release, players will be able to choose between the DirectX 9 version and the DirectX 11 version. There’s no need to purchase the package again—if the DirectX11 client is downloaded and installed, players will be able to play in DirectX 11 with the UI settings and such exactly as they are now. We plan to add even more features that make use of DirectX 11 in the future.

Heavensward is set for release in Spring 2015. You can check out the rest of the post to the full list of features and changes coming and, if your Japanese is solid, the live panel itself.

So what do you think about this announcement? Are you impressed by the DirectX 11 changes? How about the other features coming to FFXIV? Leave us a reply below.